Taste

[#psychology #thoughts]

A short note on taste and its meaning in the accelerated world.

So what distinguishes a truly good specialist from an ordinary one? Some might say work ethic. True. But from my perspective it is also taste. I use the word here in a broader sense meaning taste as integrated experience becoming perception.

And, well, someone might say it’s just me coping with the modern world, but I’m strongly convinced it cannot be borrowed mechanically. It is formed through a direct contact with reality through building, failing, again and again, correcting, comparing, and gradually learning the craft whatever it is. And at some point it becomes so integrated that it forms a form of intelligence itself.

And I don’t even want to talk about the actual technology now but more about a pattern. When production becomes abundant, judgment becomes scarce. So the skill of “choosing” the right approach becoming more and more crucial. Yet, the most interesting question is how to acquire it. From what I observe there’s no shortcut. Reading, trying, failing, trying again, asking for feedback, etc. Learning process is the same as it was years ago. Slowly learning how to see things. And when experience becomes perception, the taste emerges.

Of course, some people seem naturally more sensitive than others. They can feel proportion, tension, or any kind of “falseness” earlier, almost instinctively. But even then the path still has to be walked. Sensitivity is not yet taste. It may be the beginning of it, but without practice, correction and contact with reality, it remains only potential. Raw feeling is great, but it must be educated. And I’m telling this as someone who considers himself “sensitive” in many ways, when I was a child, many things.. well I just “felt”. I felt grammar rules, felt mathematics or geometry tasks, felst music. But at some point (in adulthood) I’ve reached a platoe, and a sad realization was that, well.. it seems a path must be walked. Through discipline and the actual gradual learning of the craft, not by “eating what can be eatean in one go” but by actual step by step work. And it’s still not easy huh.

There’s this book. Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise , that explores a similar idea from another angle. Whatever our natural inclinations may be, the path still has to be walked. In other words, you might be given a good starting point, but it doesn’t spare you from walking the path. Recommended for anyone if the text resonated with you!